What Makes Us Happy?

Happiness, like baking, is something I've always been good at. And that puzzles me: I don't live in a glass house by the sea, I'm not rich or beautiful, I've endured grief and battled depression. It's true that I've been lucky in love—I have a great husband. But I came to him happy. Yet some people who seem to have all the raw materials for happiness--looks, money, success, and love—seem perpetually glum. So what is it that really makes us happy?

The answer is not good fortune. Psychologists have known for decades that even winning the lottery won't make a person happier over the long haul. People simply adapt. Think of what happened when you got your last raise: Odds are, you felt great for the first few paychecks but soon adjusted to it, and now you may be back to feeling underpaid. Such observations have led researchers to conclude that each of us has a set point for happiness—a level of contentment that stays constant through changing circumstances, such as the loss of loved ones or winning big bucks.

If this all sounds a bit depressing, take heart. Recent breakthrough research shows we can make ourselves happier—and how to do it.

The Science of Happiness

Some of the most exciting research in psychology is in a field called positive psychology, a discipline that aims not just to relieve suffering but also to increase happiness. For the past 6 years, Martin E. P. Seligman, PhD, and his colleagues have been working to unlock the secrets of living the good life. Seligman, founding director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Authentic Happiness, has found that the key to happiness appears to lie in our internal qualities and character strengths, not in external events. What's more, he says, we can use these qualities—work with them and enhance them—to make ourselves happier over the long run.

A couple of years ago, Seligman's group described and classified the 24 character strengths that make people thrive, including creativity, curiosity, bravery, and kindness. But all these traits aren't equal when it comes to producing satisfaction. Combing through questionnaire responses from more than 5,000 study participants, the researchers found that happiness was most strongly associated with a core subset of the character-trait list that they labeled heart strengths: gratitude, hope, zest, and the ability to love and be loved. Topping the charts was love, says Nansook Park, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Rhode Island and a study author. "Relationships with other people are what make us the happiest," she says. (Learn what your character strengths are at Authentic Happiness.)

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Creating New Habits

Seligman's team made a list of 100 "interventions" that people through the ages have suggested as routes to contentment—culling ideas proposed by Buddha and self-improvement gurus alike—and set out to test them. It was, Seligman says, the most ambitious, controlled study of happiness ever done. Last summer, the results of the team's efforts were published in American Psychologist.

For the study, the researchers enlisted more than 500 visitors to Seligman's website. The adults completed online questionnaires to assess their level of happiness; then each volunteer was assigned to do one of six exercises for a week. Some wrote and personally delivered a gratitude letter to an individual who had been particularly kind to them but whom they had never adequately thanked, for instance; others recorded three things that had gone well each day. People in a control group wrote about their early memories every night for a week—an exercise that wasn't expected to have much of an impact on their moods. Every few weeks for the next 6 months, the volunteers filled out questionnaires measuring their happiness and depression.

As it turned out, all the exercises, including that of the control group, temporarily bumped up happiness levels. But some interventions proved to have a much bigger, more lasting effect than others. For example, the group that spent a few minutes each night writing about what had gone well that day felt happier for the full 6 months of the study.

"Most of us focus on our weaknesses and on what we don't have," says Carol Kauffman, PhD, a life coach and an assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. "[By listing good things,] you're training yourself to reverse your focus from what you did wrong to what you did right. You're emphasizing your strengths," and that seems to change the way you feel. Kauffman uses the what-went-well-today intervention with her patients—and does it every night herself.

The "gratitude visit," which focused on building one of the four heart strengths, also produced a lift in happiness scores. In fact, "The exercise decreased depression and increased happiness more than any other intervention," says Park.

"Gratitude is an affirmation of the goodness in one's life and the recognition that the sources of this goodness lie at least partly outside the self," says Robert A. Emmons, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. "It's a very social experience, and it's restorative in times of stress."

Seligman's study did show, though, that a single gratitude visit went only so far: The happiness boost lasted a month and then dissipated. But some people took the initiative to pay gratitude visits to additional people—and their happiness scores stayed high even after 6 months.

[pagebreak]"There's no quick fix," says Christopher Peterson, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and Seligman's frequent collaborator. "The only way to become grateful is to act like a grateful person over and over."

In the study, one other intervention proved effective—and this one suggests that it's not essential to have those major heart strengths, so long as you play to one of your character strengths. The last group of participants identified their top five strengths and then used one of them in a new way every day for a week. A person who wanted to exercise her curiosity, for instance, might have read a book on an unfamiliar subject one day, researched her family tree on another, visited a museum on a third, and so on. That, too, lifted spirits for at least 6 months in those who continued the exercise.

How You Can Be Happier

Using your character strengths helps compensate for weaknesses or vulnerabilities that otherwise can interfere with happiness, says Karen Reivich, PhD, a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania and coauthor of The Resilience Factor. She sees herself as a recovering pessimist: "Part of my brain is always scanning the horizon for danger." Instead of telling herself that her concerns are unwarranted, Reivich exercises a strength that comes naturally, drawing on her creativity to counter the dour, gloomy part of her personality. "I've created an 'awe wall' covered with poems, my children's photos, a picture of a lavender farm. And every day I work on it a bit.

"I may add a cartoon that made me laugh and a picture drawn by my young son," she says. "It's hard to be basking in all these reminders of wonder and simultaneously be filled with dread."

Reivich and other researchers say that strategies like these, used consistently over time, lead to long-lasting change. Her pessimistic habits are starting to atrophy, says Reivich. "At first the change happens at the surface, in a conscious change in behavior; then it begins to take place more deeply, becoming almost effortless. That's because I'm repeating the exercise until it becomes a new habit. If I focus my attention on noticing good and thinking about the things I can control, I'm using my attention and energy to build optimism and happiness rather than to deepen worry and sadness."

All of this begins to explain my own pleasure in life. I took Seligman's questionnaire and answered how closely 245 statements described me. I find the world a very interesting place: Yes, I certainly do. I always keep my promises: Yes--or I feel terrible. According to my responses, one of my signature strengths is curiosity. That rings true. During even a quick trip to the store, within minutes I'm discussing how to grind wheat with the baker or what the fishing's like with the fish man. My husband has learned to get a cup of coffee and wait me out. It's the exchange that makes me happy, as well as learning something new.

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So, by Seligman's measure, my happiness is less and less surprising. After all, I make my living by asking people questions about themselves and their occupations. I've found a way to use my natural strengths in my work.

Even if your job isn't a perfect match, the research on happiness suggests that you can still find ways to play to your strengths. For example, if you know that one of them is gratitude, try starting a staff meeting about a troubled project in a new way: Instead of discussing what went south, ask everyone to talk about one thing that is going well, and then thank each of them for their contribution. "That's a very different way to start a meeting," says Reivich. "And the team's reaction will feed your own sense of happiness."

Such conclusions are heartening. If satisfaction can be learned and practiced, if contentment is a muscle anyone can learn to flex, then there's hope for all of us, even those with unfair burdens or dour dispositions. It doesn't matter that none of us live fairy-tale lives. We can still live happily ever after.

Three Roads to Happiness

When positive psychologists talk about happiness, what they mean is a sense of deep contentment. There are three routes to achieving it, Martin E. P. Seligman, PhD, has found, and the most satisfied people pursue all three.

One is the pleasant life, full of pleasure, joy, and good times. The second is the engaged life, in which you lose yourself to some passion or activity, experiencing what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD, calls flow. And the third is the meaningful life: It may not have many high moments or blissful immersions, but it is packed with purpose.

"The notion of three pathways is important," says psychologist Karen Reivich, PhD. "We all know people who aren't smiley-faced, so we may say this person isn't happy. But what Seligman is saying is, 'Hey, that doesn't mean you can't have a great life.' These broader conceptions of happiness are more liberating."[pagebreak]

Relationships Tip the Balance

One way to see what makes people happy is to see what happy people are like. When researchers looked at the traits shared by volunteers who scored high on measures of happiness, one floated to the top: the ability to love and be loved. Relationships with other people are what make us happiest, says Nansook Park, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Rhode Island. "Our connection to others is the foundation of humanity."

But love doesn't necessarily mean romance. "We're talking about close relationships with other people—friends, parents, children. Humans are social creatures, and when we're engaged with our fellows, we are happiest," explains Christopher Peterson, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. "We were not created to sit alone in front of a keyboard all day."

If your top character strength isn't love, don't think you're shortchanging yourself on the relationship front. Using your strengths—whatever they are—will likely connect you to others, too, says Park. Take expressing gratitude. "Gratitude boosts the morale of the person who receives it," Park explains. "That person tries to do better, and your relationship with him or her becomes stronger and you both feel happier."

Curiosity, as well, inevitably links us to others, says well-being researcher Todd Kashdan, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at George Mason University. "You meet someone, ask questions, and the other person begins to reveal things about himself. You ask more, and the other person feels accepted. Curiosity builds a relationship."

Dorothy Foltz-GrayDorothy Foltz-Gray is a freelance writer who writes primarily about health issues.

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